Detained under section 136 of the Mental Health Act

If you have been taken somewhere by police under section 136, you have not been arrested, and you have not committed a crime. This matters because if you think you have been arrested, you will make decisions built for the wrong process — asking about a caution, worrying about a charge, treating a solicitor’s advice on “no comment” as relevant here. None of that applies.

The power itself makes the difference plain. A constable can only use section 136 where a person “appears … to be suffering from mental disorder and to be in immediate need of care or control”, and the constable acts “in the interests of that person or for the protection of other persons”. That is a welfare test. It has nothing to do with reasonable grounds for suspecting you of an offence, which is what every arrest power actually requires.

Section 135 — covered further down — is the private-premises version of the same idea: a magistrate’s warrant to enter a home and remove someone for the same welfare reasons. Neither section creates an offence, and neither results in a conviction.

Section 136 only reaches you in a public place. The Act defines that by exclusion: it is anywhere other than a house, flat or room where you or someone else is living, or a garden, yard or garage attached to it that only that household uses. Your own home is out of reach of this specific power — police need a section 135 warrant for that instead.

Where the power does apply, a constable may remove you to a place of safety, or — if you are already at one — keep you there or move you to another. They can enter the place where the power applies by force if they need to, though that force power is itself limited to places the power reaches.

Before deciding to remove you, the constable must consult a registered medical practitioner, a registered nurse, an approved mental health professional, or another specified professional — but only where it is practicable to do so. In a fast-moving crisis, that consultation can be skipped.

The detention exists for one purpose: to allow you to be examined by a doctor and interviewed by an approved mental health professional (AMHP), and for any necessary arrangements for your care or treatment to be made. It is not there to investigate anything you may or may not have done.

The maximum period is 24 hours, running from the moment you arrive at the place of safety (or from the moment the constable decides to keep you at one you were already at).

That can be extended by up to 12 more hours — but only if the doctor responsible for your examination decides your condition means the assessment genuinely could not be finished in time. It is not an extension the police can simply request, and if the extra time would be spent at a police station specifically, an officer of superintendent rank or above has to approve it as well as the doctor.

There is no equivalent of the 36- and 96-hour extensions that apply to ordinary criminal detention. Once the permitted period (and any extension) runs out, you cannot lawfully be held under this power any longer.

Since 2017, a police station can only be used as a place of safety in narrow, defined circumstances. The regulations allow it only where the decision-maker is satisfied that your behaviour poses an imminent risk of serious injury or death to you or someone else, and that because of that risk no other place of safety in the area could reasonably be expected to detain you safely. If the decision-maker is below the rank of inspector, a more senior officer has to authorise it as well.

A child can never be taken to a police station under this power, in any circumstances.

Where a police station is used, there are specific welfare rules: a healthcare professional has to check on you at least once every 30 minutes, and be available throughout so far as that is practicable. If those requirements are not being met, you are supposed to be moved to a different place of safety.

Section 135 is the equivalent power for private premises. It needs more than an officer’s in-the-moment judgment: an approved mental health professional has to satisfy a magistrate, on oath, that there is reasonable cause to believe someone is being neglected, ill-treated or kept without proper control, or is unable to care for themselves and living alone. Only then can a warrant issue, authorising a constable to enter — by force if necessary — and remove the person to a place of safety.

Executing that warrant is not a solo decision either: the constable has to be accompanied by both an AMHP and a registered medical practitioner. The same 24-hour clock, the same 12-hour extension route, and the same restrictions on using a police station as the place of safety all apply once someone is removed under a section 135 warrant.

Section 136 does not result in a conviction, a caution, or anything that goes through a criminal court. But “no conviction” is not the same as “no record”. Police can hold information about contact they have had with you, and that information can resurface: if you later apply for a job that requires an enhanced DBS check, the police can include relevant information about a section 136 removal on the certificate, at their discretion, under guidelines that are supposed to confine it to what is relevant. If that ever happens to you, you are entitled to challenge what is on the certificate.